Post-Surge Strategy: Mega-Bases?

Published: September 23, 2007, 9:49 pm

While U.S. forces in Iraq have “surged” and dispersed into urban outposts, British forces in the southern part of the country have steadily cut their numbers and retreated from outlying bases: “Removing the irritant,” is how one officer explained it to me last year. Now there’s just one major British base, at the former international airport outside Basra. From here, just over 5,000 British and coalition troops conduct security patrols and co-ordinate economic assistance and training of Iraqi forces. Is this a model for what the U.S should do after the surge? One retired Marine officer, writing in the Naval Institute’s Proceedings, thinks so. Lieutenant Colonel Ray Madonna advocates “a termination strategy” that consolidates U.S. ground and air forces at three permanent bases: the Marines’ Al Asad in the west plus two others, possibly the logistics hub near Balad in north-central Iraq plus the air facility outside Mosul further

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